This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, homeless people, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

As I approached the Loew’s movie theater on the east side of Broadway, between 83rd and 84th, I noticed this young woman standing in the street with what appeared to be the usual equipment of a survey-taker or political activist: clip-board, pen, brochures, etc.

Normally, someone like this will pounce on unencumbered pedestrians like me (as opposed to the woman and two young kids who had just walked past her) — and the opening line is usually something like, "Hi, sir, do you have a moment to help save the whales?" (if not the whales, they want to save the environment, the North Pole, the future of the Democratic Party, the rights of unborn crocodiles, or whatever else is in vogue this season).

But this woman paid no attention to me; indeed, she was looking completely away from all of the action, including me. And in retrospect, I don’t know if she was surveying, agitating, or politicking at all; for example, I have no idea what the long black cable is that she’s holding.

In any case, I took a "hip shot" of her as I walked past — i.e., simply pointed my camera, which was set to a wide-angle focus, in her general direction, and pressed the shutter button a couple of times. I then stopped and showed her the image in the camera’s LCD panel, and told her that if it wasn’t too badly framed and focused, it might show up on the Internet tonight.

So, Ms. Blonde Activist, if you’re looking: here it is!

**********************

This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan — between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue.

I don’t like to intrude on people’s privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they’re still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what’s right in front of me.

I’ve also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting — literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I’ve learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture … after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it’s pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject.

For the most part, I’ve deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don’t want to be photographed, and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage of them. I’m still looking for opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. We’ll see how it goes …

The only other thing I’ve noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They’re probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I’ve photographed … but there was just nothing memorable about them.

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Image by Danny Choo
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For other Mirai Gaia powered websites, wait for the release announcements from each of my clients. Good Smile Company will be using this function for internal use initially this week.
Your generated email address is a secret – do not tell anybody apart from your best 2D friend. Anybody who gets hold of your secret email will be able to post things under account name.
If your secret email address was compromised (you wrote it on your forehead by accident for example) then go back to your Edit Profile page and generate another one email address – the previous one will be rendered unusable.
The subject of the mail is used as the title of your post. If you forget to add a subject then the server date is used.
Your post should show up in a few seconds after you sent the mail – a bit longer for mails with more than a handful of images.
You can send up to about 30 images up to a total of 10MB.
No limit to what you can post – just be sensible.
The body of the mail is used for the description of the post.
You can use the poll and youtube syntax in the body of the mail like:-
[poll=1265029467670]Is Nanoha a cutie?:Yes:You bet[/poll]
and
[yt=youtubedhere]
You can post many polls in a single post – just make sure the poll id is unique for each poll like "poll=uniqueid_here_and_can_be_anything"
So for example:-
[poll=1265029467670]Question goes here?:Answer1:Answer2[/poll]
You can set the category of the post by adding a [cat=urlcode] in the body. For example:-
[cat=figures]
[cat=dollfie]
[cat=otaku]
If you want to post into another specific category, then you need to have a look at the url category code. So for example:-www.figure.fm/page/en/post/all/figures/all/all/all/publis…
The url category code here would be "figures" so:-
[cat=figures]
If you want to keep your post hidden after you post it so that you can edit it manually after, all you need to do is add a [visible=false] to the email body.
So an example mail I would compose would look like:-
A photo of Nanoha looking cute.
[poll=1265029467670]Is Nanoha a cutie?:Yes:You bet[/poll]
[cat=dollfie]

After attaching a few images and hitting send, a few seconds later, your post will appear on figure.fm. It will be posted under your account name and you can go in and edit as usual.Just one thing to keep in mind. Even though you can create posts from photos taken on your mobile, please try not to post anything blurry meaning that you should not be intoxicated or playing with your dolphin while taking photos which would cause blur. You especially don’t want to take a photo *of* your dolphin and post it by accident.If everything does not work then its because:-
You sent huge file sizes – post something in sensible sizes – a few hundred K per image.
You sent more than 30 images in one go. If you are posting by mail then you would probably not want to send so many anyway.
You tried to attach your cat to the email. jpg, png or gif only please.
You have an old secret email registered as a contact in your mail app but you generated a new secret email.
You didn’t attach any images.
You didn’t send the mail.
Its not plugged in or you ran out of batteries.
You are dead and cant send mail.
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You put photos in an envelope and wrote the secret email on it.
You don’t have a camera and therefore cant take photos and thus cant attach images to an email.
You tried to attach photos to an email using tape and glue.
You got no keyboard and thus cant type the email.
You got no display and thus cant compose an email.
You sent the email to customer support at Mc Donalds.
You got no Internet connection.
You cant type an email because your hands are cuffed to the bollocks of an elephant.
Aoi-chan does not like you.Will be releasing an app for the iPhone called the MG Uploader which will work with any Mirai Gaia powered sites soon.
Hope you like the feature!